A versatile and efficient multivalent vaccine platform against infectious diseases caused by viruses with mMultiple subtypes

F
or many of the world?s most dangerous viruses, traditional vaccine technologies have failed to provide
protections, especially against those with multiple strains or serotypes. The hemorrhagic fevers caused by
the Ebola and Marburg viruses are among the most deadly diseases to affect humans, and are fatal in nearly
90% of those affected. The dengue fever viruses affect over 100 million people each year, with severe cases
causing a hemorrhagic fever or shock syndrome or death. In response to these needs, we have developed a
multivalent vaccine platform, based on the complex ad-vector vaccine platform (CAdVax), and have shown
its efficacy in vaccines against some of the most dangerous infectious agents. There are many advantages of the
CAdVax platform, but the most important one is its capacity of expressing multi-antigens de novo to induce
immune responses by mimicking natural infection, but without causing any significant side effects. This makes
the platform especially suitable for multivalent vaccines to protect against viruses of multiple subtypes. In animal
studies, the CAdVax vaccines induce potent immune responses, 100% of the vaccinated animals, including non-
human primates, survived challenge by multiple subtypes of Ebola, Marburg, or effectively suppressed viremia
of all four types of dengue viruses. The same CAdVax platform has been applied to other viral agents, including
the highly pathogenic influenza, West Nile Virus, and Rift Valley Fever virus. All theses vaccines induced portent
immune response against their specific viral targets. These results demonstrated the broad application of the
vaccine platform against lethal virus infections.

Biography

John Dong is President and CEO of GenPhar, Inc. Under John?s leadership, GenPhar, Inc. has been focusing its efforts in
developing vaccines and therapies against infectious diseases using a unique vaccine platform. Scientists at GenPhar have
developed a number of multivalent vaccines against lethal viruses. John has established close collaborations with divisions of the
United States Department of Defense (DoD) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). John?s collaborations include: working with
NIH to develop an HIV vaccine that induces both neutralizing and CTL responses; partnering with the US Army Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to develop a bivalent Ebola vaccine and a trivalent Marburg vaccine; and a joint effort with
the US Navy Medical Research Center (NMRC) to develop a tetravalent dengue vaccine against all four serotypes of the dengue
virus. John has also been leading the effort to develop commercial applications of the platform, including hepatitis, Influenza, RSV
and a West Nile virus vaccine.
Dong also has a long academic career. He obtained his medical degree at the Capital Medical Institute in Beijing, and his doctorate
in molecular virology and immunology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He joined the faculty at UAB almost
immediately after obtaining his Ph.D. with joint affiliations with both the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and the Gregory
Fleming James Cystic Fibrosis Research Center. He then continued his successful academic career at the University of California-
San Francisco (UCSF), and as a Professor in the Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South
Carolina (MUSC). Dr. Dong is an expert in molecular virology and immunology and has published regularly in scientific journals
such as the Journal of Virology, Human Gene Therapy, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). John
served as the principal investigator on a number of federally funded grants and contracts, and his research has resulted in multiple
patent awards